The march wound from a working-class Aboriginal area of Redfern known as “the Block” to the New South Wales state parliament. Aboriginal elders there presented a 17-point statement demanding an independent inquiry into the youth’s death, which the Labor Party state government has rejected.

One of the marchers, Ron Poulsen, Communist League candidate for mayor of Canterbury, called for the prosecution of the cops responsible for TJ Hickey’s death. He also demanded the dropping of all charges against 29 Aboriginal protesters arrested since a subsequent street battle with cops.

Poulsen, a meat packer and member of the Australasian Meat Industry Employees’ Union, has used his campaign to speak out against police violence. “We have found a polarized reaction on the streets to our stance of opposing these cases of police brutality,” Poulsen said. “While some are inclined to support the cops, other young people and workers we’ve met have told of their own experiences of cop harassment.”

At a speakout against the police killing of Hickey sponsored by the Militant Labor Forum, Poulsen was joined on the platform by Virginia Hickey, TJ’s aunt, who spoke from firsthand experience about the constant cop harassment and brutality against indigenous Blacks, from Redfern to Walgett, the slain youth’s hometown.

“The labor movement should also oppose the calls for increased police powers that are part of the government’s ‘antiterrorist’ campaign, which has targeted Muslims in paramilitary raids in Lakemba and across southwest Sydney,” Poulsen said. He encouraged “young people and workers to join with the Communist League and Young Socialists in campaigning against the brutality of the capitalist rulers, their cop violence, and their drive to imperialist war.”

A local newspaper, The Torch, listed the candidates’ platforms in the local elections, beginning with Poulsen’s. It briefly summarized the Communist League campaign statement and quoting Poulsen as saying, “These attacks are part of a wider assault on the working class as the capitalist rulers drive to war in the face of a deepening world economic depression.”

Poulsen has also used his campaign to speak out against ruling-class moves to slash the social gains of working people. “We see the resulting crisis in public services—from preventable deaths in hospitals to the chaos on the railways,” he said.

“This assault on the living standards and rights of working people goes hand in hand with the Australian rulers’ war drive abroad, Poulsen said. “We call for the immediate withdrawal of Australian troops and police from Iraq, Papua New Guinea (PNG), East Timor and elsewhere.”

Responding to the recent deployment of Australian police to PNG, the Communist League election campaign organized a forum opposing Australia’s imperialist domination of Papua New Guinea. Campaigning in working-class neighborhoods with placards opposing Australian imperialism’s war drive and calling for “Australia out of Iraq, PNG, and the Solomon Islands!” also drew a polarized response.

One young man took angry exception to Australia being described as “imperialist,” saying it was “a democracy.” Another passerby, who agreed with the campaigners, described Australia as a “mini-USA in the Pacific.”  
 
 
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